Making excellent wheels from bits and pieces.

[Balsabasher]

Making wheels and undercarriages for our solid models need not be difficult,over the years I have been experimenting with various everyday items that offer potential for making wheels and tyres,the first port of call is to raid the domestic spare button box,here you will find various shapes of button that will lend themselves towards making WW1 type wheels with those narrow tread and thin tyres that Palmer Aerocord produced,all that you need to do is to fill the holes with something like Milliput and sand them smooth,then with a small pin vice or Dremel tool drill the centre hole for the axle or in our case the tiny model railroad track pin to hold the wheel in place.
James Hay Stevens recommended cloth buttons for his 1=72nd scale biplane wheels in his Air Stories series of plans,cloth buttons are rare these days but I did pick some of these vintage items up on a car boot sale stall,so keep your eyes open for the unusual,as above the holes are filled and the canvas cover that protects the spokes represented with a bit of plastic wood or similar filler.
By far the most readily available wheel is that easily made from those small rubber seals,you can buy a box of assorted sizes from the pound ( dime ) shops that will give you the smallest of tailwheel or buy individual seals for larger models from auto shops,here you can see a seal in the photograph below that has been filled with Milliput and all ready for drilling,they look the part as rubber is rubber whether full sized or tiny 1=144th scale,for the larger hubs use birch dowel obtainable from hardware stores of if you are lucky to have one in your area a model shop,simply slice off the size that you want and push into the centre of the seal,a tiny bit of cyno will find its way by capillery action to bond the tyre securely into place.
Wooden wheels can also be spun up in the chuck of a drill from standard dowel stock,start with a file finishing with garnet paper and finally hold the edge of a razor saw to the spinning dowel to cut off the blanks for final finishing the other side,if you have difficulty holding the wheels which you will do, then tack glue them onto another piece of dowel and break off when finished.
Yet another method of making wheels is to use plastic tubing,something like that sold to make childrens jewellery is ideal,first cut the wooden hub,then wrap the tubing around this and slice through both pieces in one go with a craft knife,open this out and place a tiny piece of toothpick or similar into the two halves of the tube,connect up,flood the end with cyno and prise over the hub  itself,this method was one that I used to use to make small wheels for rubber driven flying models but can equally be adpted for our solids.
If you are into fabricating your own wheels by moulding then try this method,get a piece of Oasis flower arranging foam block,press a plastic model wheel or hand made replica into the block half way,fill the void with fast drying car filler and whilst half cured skim off with a palette knife,repeat for the second side and join together to complete the wheel.
Or mould half of the wheel into a box filled with plaster of paris with a piece of wire tacked across the wheel resting on the ledge of the box,remove the wheel and fill with FIMO modelling material,place into the oven for a few minutes to cure,repeat and join the wheel halves as above,you can make some excellent wheels this way as any detail is picked up within the casting process.
To make the undercarriage legs I use various thicknesses of brass tubing,flatten the end where the wheel fork goes by tapping with an hammer against a metal block,form the leg with a pair of pliers and cut off leaving enough to sink into the wing or in the case of a tricycle undercarriage the fuselage,drill the fork to take the track pin,insert and solder to the leg,cut the surplus off with side cutters and file flush.
Above all keep experimenting as one day you will discover something that was the lucky accident,above all share your joy with us here of finding a solution to the problem
Barry.